SCUM: A MANIFESTO
★ ★★★ out of 5
Stage 18, Sugar Swing Ballroom (Main) Saskatoon’s Scantily Clad Theatre makes its brazen Edmonton Fringe debut with this clever time-warping dramedy featuring two writer-actresses doubling between two stories.
In one part we meet radical feminist Valerie Solanas who wrote the treatise S.C.U.M. (Society For Cutting Up Men) back in 1967.
Based on real events, the would-be playwright befriends pop-art icon Andy Warhol, and then shoots him when he chooses to ignore her.
The other story happens present day as college roommates Robyn and Marie start researching feminist thought for their gender studies class. Once they discover the Solanas manifesto it’s only a matter of time before their spirit of youthful idealism takes over and they try adjusting their lifestyles to wholeheartedly embrace its feminazi manifesto.
Period music clips cue the quick jumps in time-space. Andy (S.E. Grummett) in his/her warped, bourgeois indifference, and militant extremist Valerie (Caitlin Zacharias) are both so caught up in their own orbit that you might pity them.
But Robyn (Zacharias) and Marie (Grummett) are hilarious and endearing as they try to reconcile conventional heterosexual instincts and pop-culture tastes with the ideology of S.C.U.M.
These brash, in-your-face characters even interact with the audience briefly, pushing us to find our own definition of feminism.
Even if it’s uncomfortable at points, SCUM is funny and insightful for all genders.